Well Pavel, Ruben rarely posted and mostly in Spanish while letting some WBCCC-games simply run out, Evans.................................. ya, Eldridge could beat himself from both sides of the board, and donkysand is obviously mentioned above!

It's hard to understand why, at a rare moment in computer chess history where three top engines are playing such fantastic chess and are so competitive, that we seem to be undergoing a decline in interest.

With Rybka non of these three, more or less commited death in its development, no Vas/Lukas-messages, no Cluster-news, a ceased WBCCC and a desiccated correspondence-subforum, a sluggishing ICGA-war and a lot "monster-posters" lost (Uly, Bob...) or aging (BoL, Dr.X, ...) its still nice to see some activity of known [quality] posters here... Your contributions to TCEC were great, and i hope you will stay here till Felix finally switches off the light...

Great to see you back José! I can still remember sitting in a hotel-room, after a real depressing day, making my brave draw-call armed with my single-core company-laptop against your Aquarium-box... guess, you still wonder about 13. Rfd1...

You always played a very aesthetically-pleasing style with interesting new ideas, i really enjoyed that. What are your plans in 2018? Playing ICCF, preparing freestyle or just having fun? Did you let your Aquarium-box run over the last few years? The sad news is that we are just analyzing&optimizing into different forms of draws and a lot of people (like in this forum) already left the "scene" for good... i also took a few years "in the woods" as your country-pal called it. There is a guy working to kill the French alltogether (and he is doing that 365 days/year down to three in the night!), do you still have trust in yours? Best, Anton.

This is great to know about you, Anton! Of course I remember such a game!

Thank you very much for your kind words! I turnned off my Aquarium box back in 2013 I think. I am seeing that lots of people in the forum are not posting anymore (Paul, Garvin, Mark and others...). What do you mean that you are just analyzing for draws??

I checked the link to the french guy but unfortunately it is all german language and I didn't google translated yet. Is he analyzing my french lines day and night ?

At the moment my plans are just having fun again, now I am trying to understand main changes in engines, software, analysis techniques and even hardware! Hopefully chess has not changed so much!

> I am seeing that lots of people in the forum are not posting anymore (Paul, Garvin, Mark and others...).

Mark is still there, but a lot great guys (Nelson, ...) are sadly missing - and i guess most won't return.

> What do you mean that you are just analyzing for draws??

Engines are so strong nowadays that some ICCF GM-games played a few years ago already look like played without one. I also have gone through a few of my old games and analysis, and they realize things quickly which earlier you had to really work on hard.

He stated, armed with heavy hardware, that he is working on crushing the French and it doesn't look very good for Black - and i think that's already a consens in the corr-world... but already there i thought about you!, as you always shown to have a great understanding about that queenside-expansion and that engine eval's are not the whole story.

> At the moment my plans are just having fun again

Enjoy your journey!, and when there are questions, please let us know.

Take a look at the FICGS CHAMPIONSHIPS, for example, with the exception of the one involving Arkadiusz Wosch, who was clearly subpar, this is the last win we ever saw:
[Event "FICGS__CHESS__WORLD_CHAMPIONSHIP__000004"][Site "FICGS"][Date "2010.07.03"][Round "12"][White "Riccio,Eros"][Black "Kotlyanskiy,Edward"][Result "1-0"][WhiteElo "2477"][BlackElo "2565"]